Share a penny industry

So, when did the whole share-a-penny thing at the local gas station become an industry? I would imagine that a long time ago, somebody came up with an idea to put a little cup by the register so that people could drop their pennies in there for other customers to utilize when they were short a couple cents. Other people adopted the idea and now there’s a share-a-penny cup at pretty much every gas station one goes to. In fact, the share-a-penny idea has advanced to the point where there are specialized cups made especially for placement on station counters.

Let’s stop to think about this for a minute. This means that somewhere there’s a machine (or possibly a whole factory of machines) punching out these custom penny cups. There are engineers designing bigger and better share-a-penny cups. Teams of marketing people are trying to build share-a-penny mindshare in the heads of gas station owners. Share-a-penny cup salespeople are out there going gas station door to gas station door selling their product. An army of delivery trucks are delivering these cups around the globe.